Words Determine a Child’s Future

Talking with young children is a treat. As Art Linkletter noted in his 1945-1969 radio and television series, “kids say the darndest things.” Bill Cosby later hosted a television special based upon this Linkletter quote. But, unlike Linkletter and Cosby, I don’t listen to the stories children tell but to the words they use. Like sticking a thermometer under a child’s tongue to determine her general health, the words spoken atop the tongue are a very good gauge of her current educational status, potential for future educational success, and later economic potential as an adult. Words – the expulsion of a breath, a manipulation of tongue, lips and jaw, and the momentary expression of thought – weigh nothing, can be packed hundreds to the written page and even more to a minute of speech. Yet, these wisps of sound or scratch of writing are clear bellwethers of the intellectual person.

E. D. Hirsch initiated the educational discussion of cultural literacy in the 1980s pointing to the value of a person’s background knowledge and the personal vocabulary that person possesses as an expression of personal knowledge (Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, 1987). Hirsch and Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind, 1987) pointed educators away from the “theme” or teacher-written unit of classroom instruction toward an instruction of meaningful information based upon the child’s social and scientific worlds. Hirsch and Bloom began the argument that education should teach children a “core of knowledge” based upon real cultural and scientific information. Hirsch’s work assisted the Canadian government to restructure its national curriculum. Most recently, Hirsch has linked the lagging international test scores of children in the U.S. to a “knowledge deficit” that comes from recent trends in generalized and non-directed school curricula (The Knowledge Deficit, 2006).

Ongoing arguments about educating children are a dime-a-dozen with the educated and uneducated alike having almost unlimited capacity for airing their informed and uninformed opinions. How to teach children and what to teach children have educational, political, economic and socio-cultural aspects leaving most practicing educators scratching their heads.

In the absence of compelling argument, I like compelling evidence. There appears to be highly compelling and unopposed evidence of the following three facts.

1. There is a strong and positive correlation between an adult’s educational attainment and their annual income potential. Continuing and advanced education opens income-earning opportunities, it does not guarantee income earnings.

2. There is a strong and positive correlation between the volume and depth of a student’s working academic vocabulary and later success in school and eventual educational attainment. Vocabulary is related to reading and reading is related to academic success.

3. There is a strong and positive correlation between a child’s early development of an academic vocabulary and formative learning. Children who are exposed to and achieve a substantive vocabulary at an early age have real advantages over those who lack an early vocabulary.

Regarding education and income potential, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau publish an annual social and economic supplement that analyzes the annual earnings of people 25 years old and older. These data indicate median income levels which range broadly around the monetary value displayed. However, as a general indicator of income tendencies, there is a significant improvement in annual income based upon attained education levels. A person who attains a baccalaureate degree earns more than a high school graduate. A person with a Masters’ degree earns more than a person with a BA. Education pays off.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new03_028.htm

words blogSuccess in school is not capricious. Just as those who are successful brain surgeons or carpenters or PGA golfers because they are highly skilled doctors, woodworkers and strikers of a golf ball, success in school is related to competence in what matters in school. The following excerpts from relevant research support the statement that a vocabulary, specifically academic vocabulary, is a significant indicator of a child’s formative learning and success in school, points 2 and 3 above.

“A child’s vocabulary is their passport to understanding and interpreting a wide range of texts. Unfortunately many children from low-income settings enter school with significantly smaller vocabularies than their more economically-advantaged peers. Hart & Risley’s (1995) research with young children showed a 30-million word gap by age three. This gap has an enormous impact on school success, with longitudinal research showing a strong correlation between the richness of vocabulary at age three and language test scores in vocabulary, listening, syntax and reading comprehension at ages 9 and 10.”

http://www.earlychildhoodwebinars.com/presentations/proven-strategies-early-education-administrators-can-use-to-help-teachers-close-the-vocabulary-gap-in-their-classrooms/

“Many research studies show that vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of success in school.” (Elley, W. B. 1988 New Vocabulary: How do Children Learn New Words)

“From decoding and comprehension to succinctly expressing one’s thoughts through writing, language skill, such as appropriately posing and replying to questions vocabulary knowledge, and inference, are vital for academic success.”

http://www.speechpathology.com/articles/language-and-reading-skills-their-1175ademic success.”

“Vocabulary and reading show highest correlation with educational development. Results of early reading and vocab tests are best indicators of later academic achievement on Iowa tests.” (R. L. Thorndike, 1973-74, Reading as reasoning)

“Ryder and Graves (1984) contend that a lack of vocabulary is one of the reasons for failure in school. In addition to this, Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) report that students who have a wide vocabulary knowledge, get higher grades than students who have a lack vocabulary.

Children who have reading and reading comprehension problems have limited vocabulary. Particularly as these children read expository tests, they have difficulty in comprehending these texts due to the fact these texts include very difficult words compared to narrative texts.”

http://www.academia.edu/1393974/Is_Vocabulary_a_Strong_Variable_Predicting_Reading_Comprehension_and_Does_the_Prediction_Degree_of_Vocabulary_Vary_according_to_Text_Types

“English vocabulary level has been shown to be strongly related to educational success. Vocabulary level is a useful predictor of academic ability, even for courses like Chemistry that do not emphasize language usage.” (Bowker, R. 1981 English vocabulary manual)

“Vocabulary correlates highly with SAT Verbal and ACT and these tests correlate with college achievement.” (Mathiasen, R. 1984 Predicting college achievement: A research view)

“Reading and writing are intricate and complex processes that are closely related to and dependent on other language abilities (Pearson & Stephens, 1994). Language is the vehicle by which individuals acquire literate behaviors. Without language, we could not effectively express our thoughts and opinions or understand the thoughts and opinions of others. Language plays an important role in the development of literacy during the school-age and adolescent years. Therefore, the reciprocal relationship between language and literacy is one that cannot be ignored when considering students’ academic success.

Knowing the importance of vocabulary is one thing. Doing related to what you know is another thing entirely. Googling “how to build vocabulary in children” results in many pages of citations including academic papers, blogs and personal opinions, and the enticements of commercial vendors. Generally, these citations can be divided into school-based and home-based applications. Each base of action, school and home, is an essential contributor to a child’s vocabulary development and, when coordinated, each element supports the child’s innate interests as well as academic needs in developing a strong working vocabulary.

From the school side, the work of Robert Marzano is particularly significant. His “Building Academic Vocabulary” (http://marzano-strategies.wikispaces.com/Building+Vocabulary) has been adopted by individual classrooms, schools and school districts, and state departments of public instruction. Marzano’s designs for a structured teaching and learning of domains of vocabulary is very close to the recommendations made by Hirsch. The learning of vocabulary needs to be by instructional design in order for a child to develop a skeletal structure of language with which to add quantity and quality to a personal vocabulary. There are too many words to allow vocabulary to be taught or learned randomly.

Parents of school-aged children should become informed regarding their school’s strategy for vocabulary development. Becoming informed is not a passive waiting for the school to tell you – it is a personal inquiry into how children learn vocabulary in that school. A parent’s inspection should include knowledge of how vocabulary is addressed in grade level reading and language arts instruction, especially in the child’s learning different word groups and their semantics. Vocabulary also should be taught in every subject area as part of that discipline’s academic base. In particular, vocabulary should be a strong component of science, social studies, and mathematics. In order to understand and talk the language of biology and chemistry, history, economics and geography, algebra and geometry, the child must know the terminology of each subject. Vocabulary is just as important in art and music, physical education and technical education, and business education. Learning a foreign language intuitively is a heavy dose of vocabulary instruction. Parents should know how their child learns the skills and concepts of language and vocabulary acquisition. Memorization is important to building a vocabulary, but building a vocabulary is more than memorization.

The home-based applications can and should be just as designed and thought out as the school-based. Marzano’s six step process for building vocabulary also works at home, especially as the “subjects” learned at home are just as context-heavy as the subjects learned at school. Parents can identify the vocabulary of their home and that of their neighborhood and community. The words and word groups native to home, family and community translate very well back into school instruction.

As examples, before traveling to a grandparent’s or relative’s home in another community or state, talking about differences in location (geography, science, and culture), routes of travel (geography, mathematics, economics, culture), and how to act and behave when away from home (culture, psychology, sociology) can cause a child to learn, appropriately use and reinforce many current and new words. Food preparation and home maintenance have their own vocabularies. Personal and family shopping experiences use unique word groups and specific words. There is a vocabulary lesson available in almost every aspect of a child’s life. Whereas, every activity need not be a vocabulary lesson, because children are natural learners, taking a moment to repeat or explain an activity-based word can pay dividends, especially when multiplied by the great number of individual activities children do in the course of a day.

Children are social beings and communicating with each other is a natural process in most lives. The use of words is automatic in almost all communicating. As such, the greater a child’s vocabulary, the more successful a child will be in communicating and understanding the communications of others. The greater a child’s background knowledge as represented by vocabulary, the greater that child’s ability to comprehend what happens in her daily life, and to conceptualize about her world. A child’s vocabulary is her key to opening the future of school and adult success.